


Eulogy

by rosekings



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Mileven Week 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-06 01:27:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16378775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosekings/pseuds/rosekings
Summary: She charged into his life with her wide eyes and her superpowers and she saved all their lives more than once. They didn’t deserve someone as good as her, never could have, but Mike thinks he could make an effort to be more worthy of her love if only she would come back to him.





	Eulogy

**Author's Note:**

> [Mileven Week 2018](https://mileven-week.tumblr.com) \- Day 1: _long distance_
> 
> if you're feelin' fancy, you can read this as a sequel to [this angstfest](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12980565) but it works completely fine on its own!

Mike thought he knew the definition of a long-distance relationship. 

Even though he and El weren’t in a relationship, per se, but they were definitely _something_ and the long-distance term can apply to anything. 

But he thought he _knew._ He thought that their number was big enough. Three hundred and fifty-three one-sided walkie-talkie conversations, tears in his heart, desperate hopes and lost hours of sleep. Three hundred and fifty-three days spent in the wrong parallel universe. 

He finds out that he never really knows anything at all until after their one night of _something,_ when she steps through the door and his breath catches in his chest and she hugs him tight like she never wants to let go and he _knows_ he never wants to let go and _god, I’m never letting go._

She saves the world, and by extension, him. But it takes every ounce of willpower and spirit she has to do it. He never asked it of her, never would have. His head knows that it’s beyond selfish to want her back. Had she not been so brave, they’d all be dead by now. But his heart doesn’t really care anymore.

Standing in the dry grass, numb and detached, he knows better now. The truest, harshest reality of long-distance is just six feet of soil and a few inches of wood. That’s all there is left between them, yet he’s never felt so far away from her.

There’s no minister at her funeral. Nobody even knew her. It’s just Mike, Dustin and Lucas, Hopper, the Byers, Max and Steve. His parents never show up - why would they? Nancy does, though, and she holds his cold hand as they all stand around the fresh mound of dirt in the middle of the forest. No one can find any adequate words to give voice to, not that it would matter if they did. Every second that passes is another crack in Mike’s heart. It’s fracturing, splitting apart and taking all his feelings down with it. The reality keeps hitting him over and over and over like a wave that throws him back under every time he surfaces. 

_She’s gone._

He thought he understood pain and distance and loss the first time around. He sees now how foolish he was.

He spends every day with her, no matter the season. She’s deep in the woods where nobody will accidentally stumble across her, behind Hopper’s cabin that isn’t really Hopper’s cabin anymore because he moved out a week after it happened. For a long time, all Mike can manage to do is sit there and stare at the small headstone inlaid above her.

_El_  
_Brave and Beloved_

Those two words are the best to describe her, yet they seem shallow and halfhearted without her here to fulfill their meanings. 

He starts picking flowers on the walk there in the spring. She wouldn’t have just one favorite; she was too full of love to choose, so he takes them all and sets them on the mound that has started to blend in with the rest of the surroundings. Sometimes he screams and sometimes he cries, sometimes he does both until he has no air left in his lungs and no tears left behind his eyes. All the time, though, he mourns with his entire soul. He mourns who she was and who she was becoming and who she could’ve been. 

In the beginning, it hurts. Constantly. It burns him from the inside out, choking him during the day and invading his sleep at night. He misses her more than he’s ever missed anything. His mom asks if he’s okay, and on the outside, he is. His attendance and grades are fine. He doesn’t get angry with Holly, doesn’t complain about his chores. But he can see his own silence and remoteness every time he looks in the mirror. It’s unsettling, even to himself.

Nancy doesn’t ask. She knows.

Over time, the hurt fades to a dull ache that he doesn’t think will ever go away. With each piece of pain that dissipates, a new opportunity for healing opens up in his heart. He uses those rare patches of alleviation to embrace his friends and their weekends at the arcade, their bike rides and D&D games that he starts to moderate once more. But the ache is there, and their mage is not.

Despite being a nobody to most of the world, she was everything to him. She charged into his life with her wide eyes and her superpowers and she saved all their lives more than once. She gave herself up for them. They didn’t deserve someone as good as her, never could have, but Mike thinks he could make an effort to be more worthy of her love if only she would come back to him.

_Please just come back to me._

She moved in and out of their world like a feather in the wind. Her embrace from so long ago is barely a ghost now, something that only ever manifests itself in his dreams. He can sit in the forest for as long as he likes, but he knows that the six feet between them is insurmountable, even if he were to dig it up with his bare hands. 

The longest distance is the one nobody ever thinks about until it’s too late.

He never really knew anything at all.


End file.
